Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Tuesday 22nd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Russell. I am glad that he referred to the fact that Scotland had commissioned a report on this. Indeed, the report, which I chaired the working group to complete, took the same view as the Law Commission of England and Wales, in that we did not suggest that there should be a hate crime relating to sex or gender. In fact, we felt that misogyny is different in its nature and that the hate crime framework is not an appropriate way to deal with the problem.

I voted for the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, because nothing else seems to be on offer at the moment in England and Wales, but Scotland is looking at the creation of misogyny legislation. That is not because misogyny should be criminalised, because ways of thinking should never be criminalised. I have said that in this House before. I spoke only last Thursday in the International Women’s Day debate, in which I described how important it is to protect ways of thinking, because in our forum internum is our creativity, imagination and the ways in which we solve the world’s problems. Unfortunately, it is also the seat of the rather negative sentiments that people might feel, such as hatred. It is the actions that flow from that way of thinking that one has to look at and see whether they are appropriately criminalised.

In this House, we repeatedly have debates about the failure to prosecute rape, about domestic violence, stalking, revenge porn and so on. These continue to be insoluble and difficult to prosecute because of the mindsets of many of the decision-makers—even police officers on the ground, those prosecuting and making decisions about prosecuting, and those within our courtrooms. Unless we deal with this way of thinking in our society, we will continue to have these problems. I say that as someone who has practised at the Bar for more decades than I care to count. I have written about this and studied it. I have spent time looking at other jurisdictions, all of which have the same problems. Misogyny is a problem at the base of all this. Unless you address it seriously, you will not address the problems of how we deal with this continuing flourishing of crime against women and girls.

I urge the Government—any Government—to address misogyny. Our world is filled with it; it is a serious problem, and the way to address it is by trying to shift the dial among those who make the decisions to make them address their own way of thinking. That is what we sought to do in the working group that worked on this in Scotland. I urge all noble Lords to read the recommendations we made, because it is a serious piece of work. It is not knee-jerk or about saying, “Let’s just draw down the hate crime stuff”, because we are talking about what happens to 52% of our population. There is hardly a woman who will not be able to describe having been harassed, spoken to in unacceptable ways, degraded, humiliated or dehumanised at some point in her lifetime. That is what women are complaining of, and it is every woman, so let us have that in mind.

I heard what the Minister said about seeking to address this seriously. The Law Commission said that it was not within its remit to look at whether there should be a public harassment offence. We decided on having a public misogyny harassment offence and did not make it simply about sexual harassment, because the harassment is not of a sexual nature for older women; it is not the saying of the gross things that we have heard about from so many women.

What has happened in our society, and the reason why this is so urgent now, is that the internet—social media—has disinhibited people to say things that they would normally keep to themselves, even if they did have those intents on some women. Even if they did want to degrade and humiliate women, they would keep it to themselves. However, the internet has allowed people to pour this stuff out and it is translated on to the street. What used to be only online five years ago is now happening at the bus stop.

I want people to have this in mind; it is not some trivial matter. Noble Lords must see the enormity of the problem now: the stuff that is said to young women coming out of student unions, pubs and clubs would make men in this Chamber ashamed of their own gender—their own sex. Something has to be done about it. It is very different from what is experienced by men, so let us not make this mad equivalence, as though men at the end of their night in the pub say to each other, “Charlie, text me when you get home.” Men do not do that, because they do not have the same fear built into them from the age of nine that somehow there is something fearful out there, and it takes male form. That is the problem for girls and women: they are brought up knowing that there is something to be afraid of.

We really have to take this seriously. I support what the noble Lord, Lord Russell, has asked us to do because it is a signal to the women out there that we take it seriously. Women came in front of our commission and said that something has to be done. It may be that, in the longer term, we will have to introduce a misogyny Bill, like in Scotland. We advocated that where there is an offence, such as assault, threatening behaviour or criminal damage, judges can enhance the sentence so that there is an aggravation. It should not be inside a hate crime Bill, because it is different.

Most men do not hate women, but somehow from boyhood they breathe in this sense of entitlement and now feel entitled to say publicly things to women that noble Lords would not believe. Women who are parliamentarians, who write in newspapers or are campaign leaders receive online and now offline the most egregious threats to be raped or killed, which put them in fear. Is it any wonder, therefore, that women do not want to take part in public life or step forward to ask for equal pay or an improvement in their status in the workplace? They are undermined in their self-confidence and self-worth. We have to do something about it.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I disagree with this amendment, but I agree with one part, at least, of what the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, just said: any woman will indeed have heard the vile abuse that is spewed out online and can go offline to the bus stop, as she indicated. There is a coarsening of what is said to women, but that is my challenge: although it is vile, legislation to deal with what is said to women could well be a serious challenge to free speech.

Free speech matters because an emphasis on the cause of women’s safety could well be, and some women certainly believe so, at odds with the cause of women’s freedom and liberation. Despite everything, if we are going to say that words matter, by constantly talking about misogyny as a problem that is so rife in society we are, as I have said, in danger of frightening young women into believing that misogyny is indeed everywhere and that all men are misogynists and so on, so I want some caution here.